Renegades Magic by Robin Hobb
Soldier’s Boy reminded all of them yet again that they would rendezvous at the end of the King’s Road. When all were as prepared and eager as Soldier’s Boy could make them, he nodded to them and wished them well, and then his forces parted. Dasie’s group would spread out and filter into the town from all sides. Houses, inns, brothels, warehouses, and stores were their targets.
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Soldier’s Boy would go ahead of his warriors to eliminate the sentry at the gate. Once that way was cleared, his forces would flow in and spread out, torches ready to fire the buildings and weapons ready to kill anyone who emerged into the dark and cold. He himself would fire the stables; once his warriors saw the stables alight, they were to kindle their targets and then converge toward him.
Even before we reached the outlying buildings of Gettys Town, Dasie and her followers had vanished, melting into the night. Soldier’s Boy halted and whispered his final commands. His followers merged into the shadows. Very shortly, he rode on, apparently alone, a traveler on a big horse bundled against the night’s cold. The streets were empty around us as we passed. He had waited until it was so late that even the taverns were closed for the night, their lanterns long guttered out. Clove’s big hooves barely sounded on the deserted and snowy streets. I felt like a ghost, returned to the scene of my murder, as we thudded slowly past the crossroads. The cold of the night was as nothing compared to the cold I felt in my heart as I passed that place.
“Which is why I don’t understand why you think you owe them anything. This is where they killed you, or would have if the magic of the People hadn’t saved you. And yet you still see yourself as one of them. I would think that your thirst for revenge would be the most savage of all. ”
I had no answer to that, so I remained still and small. Why didn’t I hate these people? Perhaps because I knew them too well. I knew what sort of fears had formed that mob, and I knew the forces that could turn a decent man into an animal. Should a man be judged forever based on what he did on one overwrought night? Was a man the good soldier he had been for fifteen years, or the mindless participant in a murder that he had been for only an hour?
I turned my mind from such useless thoughts. Perhaps, I thought, I was as spineless and unmanly as Soldier’s Boy and my father thought me. Perhaps all the anger and vengeance had gone into Soldier’s Boy, leaving me with only a weary and jaded understanding of the people who had tried to kill me.
I knew that a substantial force of warriors followed us, yet even aware of them, I heard no sound. If there was one thing that the Specks excelled at, it was stealth.
Soldier’s Boy rode up to the sentry post outside the gate. In the cold, still night, the torch burned steadily in a sconce beside his sentry box. I wondered if the sentry was dozing inside his shelter, huddling close to the small potbellied stove. I could smell the tiny drift of wood smoke and the iron of that stove tingled against Soldier Boy’s skin like the beginning of a sunburn. There was a stir in the shadows within the sentry box and the guard emerged, his long gun held across his chest. “Halt and identify yourself!” he called. The dark and the cold engulfed his words and made his challenge almost too small to matter.
Soldier’s Boy pulled Clove in and sat on the big horse, looking down at the man. He smiled. The sentry stared up at my face, looked down at my horse and then up again. When he tipped his face up to stare at me again, it was whiter with more than cold and his mouth hung open. “By the good god!” he rasped out hoarsely, and then caught his breath sharply.
It was all simultaneous. I recognized the man. He recognized my face. He was the fellow who had held Amzil’s arms pinned back behind her while another soldier tore her dress open to expose her body. He’d been there the night they’d killed me, and now he looked up at me, sitting on the horse he’d recognized, too, and thought he was seeing a ghost. Terror had frozen him more than the cold. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he babbled hopelessly.
And as he gawked up at me, Soldier’s Boy leaned down, seized the top of the man’s hood in one hand and with the other casually drew his copper knife across the fellow’s exposed throat. It happened so quickly that Clove wasn’t even spooked. He nudged the big horse back into motion, and as we rode on, the sentry fell into the road behind us, spasming and croaking softly as blood blackened the packed snow. Like following shadows, Speck warriors suddenly appeared and ghosted through the gate behind us. A moment later, not one of them was visible. They had immediately fanned out within the fort, each with a specific target to torch.
Soldier’s Boy rode on. He slid his knife, oiled with blood, back into his sheath just as smoothly as he’d drawn it. He rode on, but I felt I was still back there, leaning down from Clove’s broad back and pulling the knife smoothly across the exposed flesh. The man’s dying words echoed in my ears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. ” Had he been truly sorry for what he had done, or was he only feeling the emotion I’d pressed on him the night he had tried to help kill me? It shocked me that I could wonder that. One of my fellow soldiers from my own regiment lay sprawled in his own blood behind me.
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“I didn’t do that,” I said, and then, as if I were praying, “I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that. ”
“No,” Soldier’s Boy agreed, whispering to the night. “But you wanted to. Consider that one a gift. A little bit of your manhood back. ”
The coldness of his words struck me. They mingled with the physical memory of drawing the sharp, cold blade across the man’s throat, the slight tugging resistance of his flesh as it parted, the wideness of his eyes rolled up to the night stars as he died. In that moment, I recognized how much both Soldier’s Boy and I hated who we were. We’d been split in such a way that neither of us had what was needed to be the person each of us longed to be. My ruthlessness had been parted from my empathy. Each of us was only part of a man. Yet the only way for me to become a complete person was for me to stop existing and merge myself with him. Merge myself with a renegade who had just killed one of his fellow soldiers with no more compunction than I’d have about gutting a fish. Become one with the enemy.
I was trapped in a nightmare, powerless to prevent what he was doing. The familiar streets of Gettys were quiet, deserted in the night. He made his way to the headquarters building. He did not slink; there was nothing furtive about him. He rode down the center of the street as if he were a king returned to claim his rightful crown. I recognized the sense of it. If anyone had been wakeful and had peered out a window at the sound of hoofbeats, he would have seen only a single cloaked and hooded rider moving slowly down the street. Nothing to fear in that. At the corner of the infirmary, Soldier’s Boy dismounted and led Clove around to the back.
Gettys was not like the cities of the west. There, Gernians had built with stone and mortar. Here on the eastern frontier, we had built almost entirely from wood. Soldier’s Boy, like every one of his warriors, carried three pitch torches bundled inside his coat. He took them out now and arranged all three against the dry boards at the base of the building. He cupped his hands over them, closed his eyes, and summoned the magic. For a short time, he was aware of the nails hammered into the building. Then he took a deep breath, focused his hatred on the torches, and called the magic. What I had never been able to do, he accomplished easily. A torch leapt into flame. He crouched over it, sheltering it from possible drafts with his hands and body. The first torch kindled the other two. The cold had dried the planks of the building. The united flames licked against the rough planks and peeling paint. Once the torches had heated them enough, the planks began to burn. Flames licked slowly up the side of the building. He wedged one pitch torch between two planks so that its stubborn flame would continue to feed the fire and stayed until he saw the flames crawling up the back of the building. Then he rose, and carrying his other two torches, hurried down the alley, leading Clove, until he came to the stables and the big heap of waste st
He thrust a torch into it, and it kindled almost immediately. In no time, smoke was rising from it, and then suddenly, flames shot up, carrying sparks and bits of floating burning straw up into the night sky. The light and the heat from the burning straw were immediate. I saw the stable wall begin to steam and then to smoke.
The light of that fire was his signal to Dasie as well as to his followers. As soon as she saw that he had succeeded in striking one fire, she sent forth the magic that kindled the other torches. I felt the magic go out from her. Although I could not see it, I knew that all over Gettys Town and within the fort, torches suddenly burned. Soldier’s Boy still carried one flaming torch. Heedless now of who might see him, he led Clove right up to a cart between two buildings and used it as a mounting block to get on Clove. Torch held high, he rode toward a nearby barracks. As he went, other torch-bearing Specks drifted in from alleys and byways to join him. Their fantastic shadows danced ahead of them along the sides of the buildings. Sempayli, grinning, came running from the darkness to walk by his stirrup. “And now we shall see their blood run,” he told Soldier’s Boy confidently. He carried a bow.
Clove’s heavy hooves on the packed snow and the thud-whisper of his fur-booted followers were almost the only sound. Occasionally one of the torches crackled and spit. No one spoke and they moved as softly as only Specks could. Yet again, there was no furtiveness about this torch-bearing mob.
Soldier’s Boy reined Clove in and spoke to his men. He divided them into three units, and sent two of them off to two other barracks farther down the main street. He moved purposefully toward the nearest barracks. I recognized which one. Captain Thayer’s troops would be sleeping inside. I felt queasy. Was this more of Soldier’s Boy’s vengeance on my behalf, that this barracks would be his personal target?
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I heard a distant scream, and then a woman shouting, “Fire! Fire! Wake up, wake up! Fire!” Somewhere in the town, flames suddenly climbed the side of the building and rose, casting a ruddy light. The stables, full of stored hay, suddenly roared and the roof seemed to literally burst off the building. In a matter of seconds, smoke was rolling like a flood through the streets, while bits of burning straw floated up into the cold night sky. Chances were good that as they settled, they would kindle other fires, adding to the confusion.
Where was Spink? Why hadn’t he warned anyone? Did he and Epiny and Amzil and the children all sleep on? Would they awaken before smoke crept in to choke them? Would the townsfolk who had chosen to drug themselves with Gettys Tonic awaken at all, or burn as they slept?
“You’ve done enough!” I shouted at Soldier’s Boy as he advanced on the barracks.
One back corner of it was alight, and as I watched the door was flung open. A single soldier, hopping and skipping as he tried to pull his trousers on, emerged. He was shouting, “Fire! Fire! Wake up! Get out! Fire!”
“Just take your warriors and leave. You set the fort alight in so many places, they won’t be able to fight all the fires. Gettys will burn. Give some of them a chance to escape. Don’t you want them to flee alive, to carry word of the Speck attack?”
“They must carry word of a Speck war against them, not of a random fire that spread and burned the town down. We are lancing a boil here. Grit your teeth and be silent while I do what must be done!”
Sempayli had already lifted his bow. The arrow was trained on the door. There was a small sound like torn paper, and the hopping soldier went down on the snowy ground, clutching at an arrow shaft in his chest. He saw us then and, to his credit, tried to shout a warning. It came out as a gargled spray of blood, speckling his chin and the snow around him with black dots. Two other half-dressed soldiers burst out of the door. They too went down, feathered with arrows and blocking the door behind them.
There were two doors to the barracks. Soldier’s Boy’s warriors had surrounded both of them. The building was burning well now, kindled in at least three places. I heard a terrible shriek from the other door as a man escaped the fire to die under a sword. The flames were leaping up into the night. From inside, I heard shouts and the thunder of overturned furniture and coughing. There were only two windows in the barracks. One burst outward in a shatter of glass as a chair was flung through it. The man who tried to follow the chair was shot with an arrow through the throat and fell back inside. Shouts of consternation greeted this, but another man immediately launched himself through the window. He fell dying in the snow as one of Sempayli’s arrows took him.
I do not know how many soldiers were sleeping in the barracks that night. Perhaps some died of the smoke. But every one that emerged from the doors or the window was killed before he got two steps. It was slaughter, not battle, for the dazed and smoke-blinded soldiers scarcely seemed to comprehend what was happening. In their struggle to escape the flames and engulfing smoke, they understood too late that a second foe, just as deadly, awaited them outside. Bodies piled up outside as cries for help and shrieks of burning men came from within.
I could not look away. I could not control the eyes. I wanted desperately to cut myself off from Soldier’s Boy, to retreat to where I could not experience this in any way. Under Soldier’s Boy, Clove shifted and fought for his head. He didn’t like the flames, the smoke, the cries, and the blood. But like me he was forced to stand and witness. Soldier’s Boy reined him in hard and held him. The torment for both of us continued.
In that endless time, two things slowly transformed me. As I watched the men die so ignominiously, half-clothed, blinded by smoke and dazed by shock, they suddenly became my fellows, my regiment. Whatever they had done to me, they had done with their own rude sense of judgment. It had not been just, and I knew that, but they had not. My regiment had not been the mob that cornered me and tried to murder me. Looking back, I knew that only a dozen men had willingly partaken of that madness. The others had been reluctant witnesses or shocked bystanders. I would not judge my regiment by the base actions of a few during a time of fear and anger.
I now understood what they had become when the mob spirit had taken them because I now saw how I myself behaved. Bereft of empathy or sympathy, Soldier’s Boy mirrored for me what any man might become when hate and purpose ruled him. What I had become, for all purposes. He was me; folly to deny that. He was doing what I might have done, were I ever in a position that I hated someone so badly that I completely lost sight of his humanity.
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A stray memory rose in me. I had been about fourteen the summer that an odd combination of weather had led to a suddenly burgeoning population of rats. They’d infested the barns and the corn bins, and when they had begun to appear even in the house kitchen, my father had had enough. He sent for the Rat Man, so called because he claimed that he and his pack of terriers could rid any holding of rats in a matter of days. When the Rat Man arrived, my elder brother and I had followed him and his seething pack of terriers to the barns. He ordered my father’s grooms to remove every bit of stock from the area. Then “Get your feet up off the floor!” the Rat Man had warned us, and my brother and I had perched on one of the mangers. “Kill them all, boys!” the Rat Man had shouted, and his dogs had dispersed instantly. They’d raced to every corner of the barn, and nose to the walls, had run along them smooth as water, digging at every hole, yelping excitedly and snapping at one another in their competition. The Rat Man had been as active as his terriers as he darted about eliminating obstacles for the dogs. With a hay fork, he lifted the edge of a loose board. The dogs had raced in to seize the boiling rats he had exposed. Snatch, snap, and fling! Each rat was seized, shaken violently, and then flung aside for the next. Rat bodies flew and fell all around us as the Rat Man exposed hidey-hole after hidey-hole to his dogs.
And how we had laughed, my brother and I! Laughed until we nearly lost our perches and fell into the chaos. The Rat Man danced a wild jig when a rat tried to run up his legs.
What fun.
And Soldier’s Boy’s face was set in the same hard grin that it had worn on the long-ago day. He was exterminating vermin that had overrun his territory, and he felt nothing for them as they fell and died.
The fire gave a sudden roar, and then the entire roof erupted into flames. Shingles and pieces of burning rafter began to fall inside the building and the anguished screams grew louder. Then, with a sudden crack, the roof gave way and collapsed inside. It was over. The night darkened around us as the fire that had blazed overhead like a beacon suddenly folded in on itself. Soldier’s Boy gave his head a shake as if he were just waking. He looked around for his next target. More rats were hiding and must be rooted out.